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To go to Grad school or not to go to Grad school...

Hoy hoy

So I'm going to be finishing up Undergrad soon and was wondering if I should perhaps persue a MS in Web Programming or just go straight to the market?
I know that due to "education inflation" the "BS degree is nearly the equivalent of a Highschool Diploma" so will getting a MS (probably going to take night classes to obtain it if I do go for it) make me more "job worthy"? Or will getting immediate experience help out more? Or...what?

I'm just looking for some personal experience and advice from peeps

Oh and BTW, if I do just kinda hit the job market, are there any particularly important coding languages I should be hitting the books on to get a leg up in the job market?

With web programming, unfortunately, there's a large gap between the schooling and the real thing. In my experience, agencies hire based on the skills you demonstrate, with little regard for educational background. I'd strongly suggest you go straight to the market. If either you or your workplace are interested in a masters degree, then you can pursue it while working. But in this field, actual skill and experience easily trumps any degree.

As for languages Ruby (and knowing ROR) seems to be fairly popular nowadays with forward-thinking agencies....

Saw an interesting article somewhere recently (PCWorld, maybe?) that cited several significant internet companies/sites that originally started off in Ruby and some other "cool" languages, but as the companies and projects grew, they all migrated to Java (except one that migrated to Python).

Saw an interesting article somewhere recently (PCWorld, maybe?) that cited several significant internet companies/sites that originally started off in Ruby and some other "cool" languages, but as the companies and projects grew, they all migrated to Java (except one that migrated to Python).

Regarding the degree, it's all about the job you're looking for. For most web dev positions, experience is definitely more important. The advanced degree will come into play if you're working on innovative backend stuff: refining fuzzy search algorithms, high demand storage mechanisms, or anything else that sounds particularly Googley.

There are some really interesting sounding positions out there that will definitely require more formal education than most of us have time to acquire. But, most listings just require that you're basically competent. And basic competency isn't well-tested in the classroom; it's proven in the field.

How is Perl the second highest? That doesn't seem right. Could be that you're finding system administration jobs that use Perl, rather than Web-related jobs. Likewise, Java might be skewed high because you're finding lots of general software development jobs not related to Web development.

I made some minor adjustments to the search terms to make them more Web-specific. "perl" became "perl cgi", and "java" became "java jsp".

How is Perl the second highest? That doesn't seem right. Could be that you're finding system administration jobs that use Perl, rather than Web-related jobs. Likewise, Java might be skewed high because you're finding lots of general software development jobs not related to Web development.

I made some minor adjustments to the search terms to make them more Web-specific. "perl" became "perl cgi", and "java" became "java jsp".

No matter the specific Perl/Java context/technology, I would expect to see "web" somewhere in the title or description if it's web development related coding. Whereas I wouldn't expect to see CGI, and I'd rarely expect to see JSP. I'd think you're excluding a lot of web dev positions by adding those terms. The most accurate graph undoubtedly lies in some convoluted combination of the 3 graphs ...

Another thing to bear in mind, of course -- filling the position of a "web developer" (or similar) does not ensure that you're responsibilities will remain exclusively that of a "web developer" in 1 to 10 years. Hell, you may start by doing quite a bit that isn't really "web developer" work ... Maintaining Perl scripts that pipe data around "for the website", for instance

Last edited by svidgen; 05-01-2012 at 05:15 PM.
Reason: i really need to re-read this stuff before i post it ...